


Good Night

by 3370318



Category: Never Satisfied (Webcomic)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, and that's basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 06:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9308519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3370318/pseuds/3370318
Summary: Sylas tries to remedy the case of Seiji's chronic insomnia, which ends up not helping at all. The standard procedure.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i guess this could be interpreted as romantic or platonic, depending. bcos it is vague whether there is any relationship established or not... but the deeper i got into this ... it just kept getting gayer...

Sleeping wasted his time, Seiji thought. There were better things to do than let yourself become unconscious for however many hours a night, like causing mischief or engaging in tomfoolery. And, despite what the name implicated, sleeping was the opposite of what you were supposed to do at sleepovers. Sylas had little to no recourse in understanding social conventions, however, so Seiji had no choice but to lie in bed and stare into the shadows of the vaulted ceiling.

Eyes closed. Circling the drain between waking and sleeping. He strained to hear the distant waves - too far away - could only hear the light rain flecking the window in rhythmic patters. Not much of a soundscape.

Seiji pressed his hand to his forehead and sighed. Something shifted beside him; Sylas under the duvet, with a mess of a bedhead, and his long limbs tucked into himself. Seiji rolled over and dared to gently place a palm to Sylas’s spine, comforted by the warmth of his skin even through his shirt. He thought about pulling Sylas to him and listening to him breathe until he fell asleep, but dropped his intruding arm like a dead weight when Sylas turned to face him.

“Can’t sleep?” Sylas asked, voice soft enough that Seiji almost believed he had imagined it.

“Mm.”

“Why’s that?”

“No reason,” Seiji said, then sniffed with indifference. “You can get back to it.”

Sylas, unruffled, propped himself up on his elbows and tucked an unruly strand of hair behind his ear. Seiji met the eyes trained on him, mild and familiar.

“When’s the last time y’got… eight hours?”

“Never. I don’t need that many.”

“You fell asleep… in front of our magister. Last week,” Sylas recalled.

“Yeah.”

“She was furious.”

“Yeah.” Seiji felt himself wince on instinct.

“You should sleep, Seiji,” Sylas said, words carried by a drowsy candor. “It helps when I have a nice bath before bed. Or I read poetry—”

“And it bores you to sleep?”

“It’s relaxing, you philistine.”

“Sure.” Seiji stretched and settled back against the headboard, then squinted to catch the fuzzy outline of Sylas’s face in the darkness. “What’s the use of telling me, then? You wanna draw me a bath at three in the morning?”

“No. I’m just offering, for future reference. Do you want me to?”

“I might relax so hard that I fall asleep and drown.”

“I wouldn’t let you drown. I'd—it wouldn't be one of the nice bathrooms. It'd be the one with a tiny tub. A normal one,” he corrected. “Because, uh, you're not worth the fuss.”  

“If you put me in a tiny bathtub, I'd have to never come over to your house again.”

“Hah.”

“That’s not a joke, Sylas. I’m pretty high maintenance.”

“Oh, I’m aware...”

Seiji felt the brush of Sylas’s cheek against his navel, his head bowed to rest there. They sat in silence for long enough that Seiji thought Sylas drifted off again, and ventured to run a hand through his friend’s hair. It felt right enough that Seiji closed his eyes and surrendered himself to whatever the void of slumber had in store for him—

Yet Sylas stirred again, hung up on some new revelation.

“It could be anxiety.”

“What?”

“They say that most of the time, you can’t sleep because you’re worried about something.”

“Well,” Seiji said, unsure of how to proceed. “Doesn’t sound like me.”

“I dunno. You could tell me.”

“I would,” he insisted, but let his eyes wander to the dark corners of the ceiling again. “I’d tell you. There’s nothing to tell, though.”

“There must be something, Seiji. No person just… goes through life without getting annoyed, or… or stressed out.”

“Get real. I don’t sweat the small stuff, Sylas. And—”

“It’s all small stuff,” Sylas replied, over-familiar with the mantra. “I don’t know. I don’t get how you do it…”

“Me neither,” Seiji said, though ‘ _for you_ ’ dallied at the edge of his tongue before he willed it away. “It’s fine, you know. _You_ sound like you're stressed out about something.”

“…yeah, maybe. I wanted to make sure you could sleep.”

“You wanna know what would help?” Seiji asked, making a point to use his low and smooth voice that would spread as easy as butter. “I just need you, that’s all.”

“I… don’t follow,” Sylas said, flustered.

“Go to sleep. Stay here, and sleep. I don’t need poetry or hot water or, whatever. I wanna be with you, that’s it. How do I put this—I don't worry about anything when I know you're here. It's fine. You're enough, Sylas.”

“Ah,” Sylas eked out, too preoccupied trying to blink the shimmer out of his eyes to collect his thoughts. “That's so… I don't, uh… okay. Thank you, Seiji.”

He softened into Seiji's hand, still carded in his hair and willing him to stay near. Peaceful silence, then the persistent drizzle against the window pane filled the space between them.

Seiji could tolerate it, the lack of mischief. Even the lackluster sounds of nature; it helped that they weren't any louder than the occasional murmuring from his best friend moored to his side. 

“Good night.”


End file.
